I dig my fingers into his coat. “Put me down.”
He stops and looks at me. No hurt. No offense. Just patience.
“I just…” A shallow, almost hiccupped breath. “I have to walk.”
He sets me down, my bare soles meeting the shock of cold stone, and extends his hand. I take it. He laces his fingersthrough mine, and we walk the final stretch together. Not leading. Not following. Side by side.
The doors groan open.
The throne room is empty. Just the long stretch of marble, the vaulted ceiling, the colored light from the high windows falling across the floor in pale, fractured shapes.
And Miss Hampshire, beside the throne, the cloth-wrapped blade cradled in her arms. “Your Majesty.”
The cloth falls away. Steel catches the morning light and throws a sliver of pink across the floor. My throat narrows, eyes going to the spot where Kael’s blood pooled not so long ago. Scrubbed. Sanded. Oiled.
But my feet know where it was.
Where mine will be.
“Should I fetch your mother?” Miss Hampshire asks.
“No.” Too fast. I soften it. “If this works, then there’s nothing to explain. And if it doesn’t…” I glance at Vale. “No need to frighten her with something she’ll never have to grieve.”
Miss Hampshire sets the blade on the arm of the throne.
I turn to Vale. “You can bring me back.”
“Yes.” His thumb traces a circle against my knuckle. “I’ve done it once. A woman startled at the sight of me, slipped, hit her head. Died hours later. Years too soon.” A muscle shifts in his jaw. “I set it right. As I will set this right.”
Miss Hampshire rests her hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, child.”
“Right…” I look at the blade. “Let’s do it.”
Vale lifts the steel from the velvet and turns to me. “Take off your crown. You must place it on my head.” His eyes hold mine, green and steady and full of something too tender for this room. “Crown me yours, Elara. Because I am, and I will never again not be.”
My fingers rise to the circlet. The metal hums as I lift it free, almost as if it knows. It leaves a phantom weight behind, a ghost of pressure, as I step forward, rise onto my toes, and settle the crown onto his dark curls.
“Nobody is here but us,” I whisper. “I need to see your heart when we do this. Please.”
Vale places a whisper-soft kiss to my temple. “You will have me in whichever form you request.”
The shift moves through him like a shudder. Vale falls away; Death rises through. Miss Hampshire inhales sharply behind me—a single step backward, shoe scraping stone.
“I could have done without ever having to see this again,” she mutters.
Death parts his cloak. Ribs. Sinew. And there…his heart, two strings pulsing, a ragged absence where the third should be. “Are you ready?”
My eyes burn. I nod.
He raises the blade to my throat. Then stops.
His hand trembles. Not a faint tremor, but a shudder that moves through his entire arm, rattling bone against tendon, making the steel quiver so violently the light dances off it like something panicked.
He pulls the blade back. Stares at it. Then brushes his cloak up and draws the edge across his forearm. A thin dark line opens, weeping something too thick and too slow to be blood. He watches it bead, testing sharpness, learning depth.
“It’s sharp,” I say. “Whatever pain there is, I can handle?—”
“Don’t.” The word is ragged. “Talk of pain, and I will stop. And I cannot stop.”
